Although God saves diverse people from all kinds of backgrounds, races, and countries, He saves them into one common faith (Ephesians 4:4-5). No matter the diversity of those saved, there will always be common things they share in salvation.

One of those shared things are the realities the Holy Spirit of God shows believers as they are coming to grips with the gospel of Jesus. All believers, no matter their backgrounds, at one point, have come to understand these three realities. Charles Spurgeon unpacks them well.

1) The Holy Spirit Shows Us the Reality of Our Sin. The first thing the Holy Spirit does when he comes into a man’s heart is this: he finds him with a very good opinion of himself: and there is nothing which prevents a man coming to Christ like a good opinion of himself. Why, says man, “I don’t want to come to Christ. I have as good a righteousness as anybody can desire. I feel I can walk into heaven on my own rights.” The Holy Spirit lays bare his heart, lets him see the loathsome cancer that is there eating away his life, uncovers to him all the blackness and defilement of that sink of hell, the human heart, and then the man stands aghast. “I never thought I was like this. Oh! those sins I thought were little, have swelled out to an immense stature. What I thought was a mole-hill has grown into a mountain; it was but the branch on the wall before, but now it has become a tree of Lebanon.

2) The Holy Spirit Shows Us the Reality of  Our Inability. “Oh,” saith the man within himself, “I will try and reform; I will do good deeds enough to wash these black deeds out.” Then comes the Holy Spirit and shows him that he cannot do this, takes away all his fancied power and strength, so that the man falls down on his knees in agony, and cries, “Oh! Once I thought I could save myself by my good works, but now I find that

‘Could my tears for ever flow,
Could my zeal no respite know,
All for sin could not atone,
Thou must save and thou alone.'”

3) The Holy Spirit Shows Us the Reality of Our Savior. Then the heart sinks, and the man is ready to despair. And saith he, “I never can be saved. Nothing can save me.” Then, comes the Holy Spirit and shows the sinner the cross of Christ, gives him eyes anointed with heavenly eye-salve, and says, “Look to yonder cross. that Man died to save sinners; you feel that you are a sinner; he died to save you.” And he enables the heart to believe, and to come to Christ. And when it comes to Christ, by this sweet drawing of the Spirit, it finds “a peace with God which passeth all understanding, which keeps his heart and mind through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

(Taken from the sermon titled, “Human Inability“)

Thank the Holy Spirit for His loving ministry of giving us the eyes to see our sin, our inability, and our Savior.